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Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

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Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#171

Post by jamestnz »

hnha wrote: post #169
chadzawistowski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the name 'Locke Mail' for that very reason.

Without searching I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I guess it is something related to free speech in the USA? I might remember it from school. What I am implying is that it seems like a localized term and people elsewhere might have no connotation(?) to it. In German the word means a curl of hair.

>Without searching I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I guess it is something related to free speech in the USA?

He was a British philosopher from the 1600s, an important Enlightenment thinker.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#172

Post by nherment »

I don't understand how anyone of you can say "it's never going to take over email 1.0". Success is a lot about realisation. We have to start somewhere and this is a good start as any.

Having a standard is certainly a necessity. I definitely see secure email starting as a niche and if the user experience is at least as good as gmail I don't see any reason why a new email system would not take over.

It's not going to happen overnight but there definitely is a need for it. Lavabit and Silent Circle are proofs that this need is real.

There are major issues with replacing the current email:

1) there is no good open source email interface (if I'm wrong, please point me to this gem). Roundcube is good but not good enough when you come from gmail. I don't know of anything better than roundcube.

2) the threshold for a company to implement secure email is too high. Having a secure standard with secure libraries certainly lower that threshold

3) the current open source mails are GPL like licenses. This sucks for companies and individuals. Give them the ability to do what they want, including money. Replacing email is not going to happen without investment. Technology investments are mainly done by companies, only exceptionally by individuals.

Anyway, if anyone wants to take a shot as implementing an easy to use & opinionated (ie standardisation vs customization) webmail, chime in: https://github.com/nherment/dolphyn

(edit: form & typos)

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#173

Post by vidarh »

sandstrom wrote: post #57
natural219 wrote: post #45

I appreciate the cheekiness of calling it the "Dark Mail Alliance", but from a purely PR perspective, it would make sense to reconsider your name if you are taking the position that encrypted end-to-end email is not solely an interest of those pursuing shady or deviant activities.

I totally agree, I really think you should change the name. Some suggestions: - Locke Mail [from John Locke] - Mill Mail [from John Stuart Mill] - Hobbes Mail - Liberty Mail

Prtty much nobody would understand the connotations of Locke, Mill or Hobbes, and amongst those who do they'd be contentious.

Consider that for example Mill thought despotism could be acceptable under utilitarian principles if the end result was a better society afterwards; I don't know what you think of Marx [Marx Mail? Maybe not], but even an authoritarian reading of Marx ideological works fits within utilitarian principles to those who agree with it, while those who read Marx from a libertarian viewpoint, e.g. left communists, would generally find Mills distastefully authoritarian.

Locke was a major investor in the slave trade, and a central participant in trying to institute a feudal aristocracy in Carolina - writing about freedoms while trying to deprive others of them. Locke Mail in that respect would be fitting brand for a NSA run mail service for its hypocrisy alone.

Hobbes, while talking about individual rights, was a supporter of a strong central government an a supporter of absolute monarchy. He too would be a suitable beacon for the NSA.

That is not to say that these people were not important for the development of philosophical ideas related to freedom, but only in relation to the politics of the time. Today all three of them are archaic and authoritarian compared to a lot of more recent philosophers.

As for Liberty Mail, outside of the US at least it would be likely to leave a bad taste with a lot of people. It reads like Far-Right-Wing-US-Nationalistic-Nutjob-Mail or Lets-Pretend-It-Is-Liberty-While-We-Screw-You-Over-Mail to me, and I know a lot of people likely to have similar reactions.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#174

Post by abrahamsen »

hnha wrote: post #169
chadzawistowski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the name 'Locke Mail' for that very reason.

Without searching I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I guess it is something related to free speech in the USA? I might remember it from school. What I am implying is that it seems like a localized term and people elsewhere might have no connotation(?) to it. In German the word means a curl of hair.

I'd say the advantage of 'Locke Mail' is that it gives the right associations even to people who haven't heard of John Locke. Locked Mail. Mail protected by a (cryptographic) lock.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#175

Post by mattlutze »

natural219 wrote: post #45

I appreciate the cheekiness of calling it the "Dark Mail Alliance", but from a purely PR perspective, it would make sense to reconsider your name if you are taking the position that encrypted end-to-end email is not solely an interest of those pursuing shady or deviant activities.

Extending the points of a few others,

1. I'd give the alliance a generic name that won't come off as threatening or malevolent when used out of context in news articles. Make it boring to talk about the alliance so it can operate larger and and with less scrutiny.

2. If you really really want to politicize the products, launch several regionally branded services, that can use the same architectural design, but leverage the cultural mores of individual freedom for those areas. What catches on in Germany may not be what sells in Spain/Italy/Greece today, for example.

However,

The "FMail" suggestion, or something similarly benign, is a strong choice, in that it diminishes the effect of partisan rhetoric and allows the tool to be sold on its actual merits.

3. Then you can gin up radical "Free the email!" action groups to run around and be obnoxious for you, take the heat and phoenix themselves into new groups every so often.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#176

Post by vidarh »

sandstrom wrote: post #85
kenko wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hobbes Mail makes no sense; either you're in the condition of the war of all against all (no thanks) or you've surrendered everything to a single sovereign (no thanks).

Haha, a valid point! :) I wasn't thinking of Leviathan, rather some of his thoughts on liberalism[1]. The right of the individual, that political power should represent the people etc. [1] Liberalism in it's classic and original sense (not the skewed meaning that it somehow has gotten here in the US). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United...

His thoughts on liberalism are deeply connected with his social contract theory. He believed the strong central government was a necessity to protect the right of the individual, and that so individuals do cede power to the sovereign by acceding to a social contract.

The social contract of Hobbes is not something one can opt out of, or refuse, but an explanation and justification for individual rights within an absolute monarchy. At the same time Hobbes argued that to preserve the peace was so central that the sovereign had the power, and was indeed duty bound under the social contract, to take whatever measures necessary to ensure peace - even authoritarian measures.

His ideas on social contract theory are historically important as a pre-cursor to more expansive ideas about personal freedoms, but they are extremely authoritarian by most modern standards.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#177

Post by vidarh »

hnha wrote: post #169
chadzawistowski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the name 'Locke Mail' for that very reason.

Without searching I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I guess it is something related to free speech in the USA? I might remember it from school. What I am implying is that it seems like a localized term and people elsewhere might have no connotation(?) to it. In German the word means a curl of hair.

He might be fitting in relation to US history considering that while he spoke of equality and freedom, he was a major investor in the slave trade (he also was involved in trying to introduce a feudal aristocracy in Carolina).

He was very progressive for his time, and so he's one of the "icons" of classical liberalism, but he died in 1704, and we've moved on a tad from then.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#178

Post by vidarh »

cantrevealname wrote: post #134
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest barrier to entry of any new and secure email protocol will be GMail. GMail (and similar services) are what most people seem to use at this point. And GMail won't update to 3.0 in any meaningful way, no matter what, since they want to be able to mine the data in your email, so they will still be storing it on their servers "in the clear." Which means the next time NSA hacks their servers, they'll s…

> GMail won't update to 3.0 in any meaningful way, no matter what Perhaps this problem can be addressed by having a plugin/add-on/extension that decrypts the mail within the browser. GMail, Yahoo, or other mail providers that don't adopt this new and secure email protocol won't get the plaintext of your message, and preferably not the metadata either. This requires that the new protocol use a converter or proxy or so…

There are two parts to e-mail security: (EDIT: To the security of the information in any particular message, there are additional issues regarding e.g. routing to prevent leaking information)

The contents. You can secure that with pgp etc. today, and gmail can do nothing about it, and there a browser plugin that "hides" the mess would be workable.

The metadata. Here gmail etc. is a problem. The best we can do are remailers that anonmize the sender. In the case of e.g. Gmail, the recipient at Gmail will obviously still be in plain text, but we can obscure the sender by encrypting forwarding information and setting the To: field to a remailer. A plugin could handle that too.

Of course any such plugins would either need the cooperation of the webmail providers (yeah, right) or would need to deal with breaking whenever they change their UI.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#179

Post by Hellenion »

sandstrom wrote: post #57
natural219 wrote: post #45

I appreciate the cheekiness of calling it the "Dark Mail Alliance", but from a purely PR perspective, it would make sense to reconsider your name if you are taking the position that encrypted end-to-end email is not solely an interest of those pursuing shady or deviant activities.

I totally agree, I really think you should change the name. Some suggestions: - Locke Mail [from John Locke] - Mill Mail [from John Stuart Mill] - Hobbes Mail - Liberty Mail

How about just "Mill"? It'll maybe help differentiate it from regular (e-)mail, but it still sounds similar.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#180

Post by vidarh »

anaphor wrote: post #136
sandstrom wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree, I really think you should change the name. Some suggestions: - Locke Mail [from John Locke] - Mill Mail [from John Stuart Mill] - Hobbes Mail - Liberty Mail

Popper Mail (go read The Open Society and Its Enemies)

Any philosopher, ideologist or politicians you might think of will elicit exactly the opposite reactions of what you want from a substantial percentage of people who would otherwise like the idea.
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